The "miscarriage of justice" has been repaired, the "witches" posthumously rehabilitated nearly 375 years after their death sentence. Connecticut lawmakers passed a resolution Thursday proclaiming their innocence and denouncing the sentences handed down to the nine women and two men accused of witchcraft and hanged high and short. A victory hailed by the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project.
Sarah Jack had invested herself with the descendants of these "heretics". Her ancestor had been convicted in a witchcraft trial. In her late forties, she identified somewhat with these women prosecuted for witchcraft, "usually after the age of 40," she explained in February, in a long documented article in the New York Times.
His relative had not been hanged as eleven others were in Connecticut, in trials that lasted from 1647 to 1697. But two women of his distant ancestry had been in the famous and terrible trials of Salem, Massachusetts, which like Connecticut and four other states then constituted New England.
A single "witness" could suffice
Women were most often accused, and a single "witness" could be enough to overwhelm someone. Misogyny made them scapegoats, according to Beth Caruso, who co-founded the Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project. While more hostile to women and other marginalized groups, Connecticut State Representative Jane Garibay, who sponsored the resolution, was hopeful for the request of the descendants of the "witches."
The decision comes on the eve of the 376th anniversary of the very first hanging for witchcraft in New England, that of Alice Young.
Today is the 376th anniversary of the hanging of accused witch Alice Young of Colonial Windsor. Yesterday her name was cleared by the state of Connecticut https://t.co/ub9BZOZcgT
— Connecticut Witch Trial Exoneration Project (@CTwitchhunt) May 26, 2023
His fault? "Historians believe she was accused of witchcraft during an epidemic that killed many children, including those of a family who lived nearby. When her only child, a girl, survived, others claimed that her use of witchcraft kept the child alive," The New York Times summarizes.
This rehabilitation is important for the future, says Sarah Jack. "Some people have to change their way of thinking," she told the newspaper. And "we really want to weigh in on that."
